Are Garbage Disposals Eco-Friendly?

#2 Eat Low on the Food Chain. Another change you can make that has an enormous impact is eating as low on the food chain as possible, as often as you can. Aside from having fewer bones to dispose of, you also will save massive amounts of water and energy. While figures vary wildly on the relative water and energy use of animal products vs. vegetable products, there is unanimous consensus that eating more vegetarian and vegan meals saves water (and reduces water pollution, air pollution, energy use, and much more).

It’s hard to find trustworthy figures (many groups have an agenda either for or against meat, independent of environmental impact) but the FAO’s “Livestock’s Long Shadow” and the Water Footprint Network’s (WFN) reports have really rigorous calculations. WFN comes up with beef requiring about 9 more gallons of water than soybeans as one example (634 gallons of water for a single hamburger). This is just a global average—in the U.S. our intense factory farms typically have a much higher impact.

I highly recommend anyone interested in greening their diet to check out Just Food by James McWilliams, as he critically evaluates all of his existing beliefs about green eating (organic, local, vegetarian, etc.) and comes up with some surprising results (including a great summary on grass-fed beef).

But even if the difference between the garbage disposal and the landfill is tiny relative to the impact you can have by wasting less food and eating less animal products, it’s still a question worth answering. Fats should definitely go in the garbage, as they can cause plumbing problems. For the rest, while it can vary significantly depending on where you live, in general the garbage is also preferable.

Here’s why:

1) As you noted, it takes a lot of water just to wash your scraps down the drain, and takes even more water and energy to filter the scraps back out. This is especially critical if you live in a dry area or are having a drought.

2) In many municipalities, the solid waste removed from the water goes to the landfill anyway. In some areas it’s used as crop fertilizer or to generate energy.

If you want to be 100 percent sure of what to do, I recommend finding out whether your local landfill or water treatment plant captures methane to produce energy. If the landfill doesn’t, and the water treatment plant does, that makes the garbage disposal a more attractive option.

Either way, if you can cut down on how much food you waste—why not use those leftover chicken bones to make stock for soups?—and/or cut back on your consumption of animal products, you can probably cross the garbage disposal off your list of big issues to worry about.

Jon Fisher is a data management specialist for The Nature Conservancy, the world’s leading conservation organization. He has studied forestry, environmental biology, stream ecology, environmental engineering and how technology and spatial analysis can improve wildlife management at airports. He also loves to cook delicious vegan food. Opinions expressed here are the personal opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Nature Conservancy.